The Kennedy Assassination

November 22, 1963

As the clock neared 12:30 p.m., the excitement built; what had started minutes earlier as only small groups of people quickly grew until throngs filled the sidewalks. In buildings surrounding the area, hundreds paused at their work to lean out windows or take a break to step outside – it was rare to have the opportunity to see the President of the United States.

On the sixth floor of one of these buildings, a man sat looking down at the waiting crowds. He was also waiting, but for a far different reason. All of his life he had been brushed aside, not because he was weak, which he was, but because everyone in his life had failed to see that he was important. He was determined to show them that they were wrong. He was just minutes away from committing an act that would stun a nation, shock the world, and permanently embed his face and his name in history.

Five hours earlier, the sun had moved over a cloudy and cold Dallas sky which threatened rain. At the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth, John F. Kennedy readied himself for a busy day of speeches and glad-handing.

Born into a family of wealth and privilege in 1917, Kennedy had made a name for himself in World War II when his PT boat had been cut in half by a Japanese destroyer. Two men had died, but Kenney had managed to keep the remaining crew alive on two tiny islands for six days before they were rescued. After the death of his older brother Joe a year later, his father thrust all of his political ambitions onto his younger son. Elected to the House of Representatives in 1946, Kennedy had become a rising star in the Democratic Party and won a Senate seat in 1952. All the while he made no secret of his plans to run for the presidency, finally receiving the nomination in 1959. In one of the closest races in history, he had beaten Vice President Richard Nixon by just two-tenths of a percent. The photo finish had caused Kennedy to walk a tight rope throughout his first term, trying to appeal to liberals on social issues, while not appearing too soft on Communism to conservatives. Many decisions such as the future of American involvement in South Vietnam and Civil Rights legislation still needed to be made at the time he made the fateful trip to Dallas, Texas.

The purpose of Kennedy’s visit was twofold. First, Kennedy hoped his presence would smooth out an interparty fight that had broken out between Texas Senator Don Yarborough’s liberal Democrats and Governor John Connally’s more conservative wing. The trip was also meant to serve as a warm up for the presidential campaign of 1964, which was about to swing into full force.

Lee Harvey Oswald was already up that morning; the night before, he had visited his wife and two infant children living several miles away. Dressed in grey slacks and a grey shirt and coat, he walked to the house of Linnie Randall. Randall’s brother had helped Oswald get a job at the nearby Texas School Book Depository three weeks earlier and was his ride to work. As he watched Oswald approach the house, Randall noticed that he was carrying a long object wrapped in paper which bulged out on one end. Oswald quickly put it in the back of the car before she could get a better look at it. Her brother was also curious; when he got out to the car and saw it, he asked, “What’s in the package Lee?” “Curtain rods,” Oswald replied.

Oswald, born in October 1939, had a life markedly different from Kennedy’s. His father had died two months before he was born, and his mother was by most accounts a self-absorbed woman who wanted little to do with her children. Much of Oswald’s early years had been spent moving from one place to another. This lack of stability caused him to turn inward and become distant, and he eventually began reading Communist material. At sixteen, he had joined the Marine Corps and showed skill with a rifle. One Marine would later remember, “In the Marine Corps he was a good shot, slightly above average…and as compared to the average male…throughout the United States, he was an excellent shot.” Still, he had done little else to impress his fellow Marines, who saw him as weak and complaining. Soon Oswald began professing his love of Communism more openly, and found that he hated Marine life. In 1959, he asked for a discharge in order to care for his mother. Upon receiving it, he spent just two days with her before taking a journey to Russia, securing a six day tourist visa, and applying for citizenship. Oleg Kalugin, a major general in the KGB, remembered, “The initial reaction to any foreigner in the old USSR was to view them as CIA or some other intelligence agency.” He continued, “But after some research we found out he was not good enough for the CIA. So we thought we could turn him into a Soviet agent eventually, but he was no good for that, either.” He concluded, “Oswald to us looked like a misfit, an unhappy man, a man who did not know what to do, a man who was looking for something, and he did not know himself what he was looking for.” Yuriy Nosenko, another KGB officer who researched Oswald at the time and later defected, agreed with Kalugin when he said, “The KGB didn’t want Oswald from day one.”

At the end of his visa, Oswald received word that his application for citizenship had been denied and slit his wrists. Rushed to a hospital and then briefly to a psychiatric ward, he was eventually declared a stateless person and allowed to live in Minsk as a metal worker. He married a Russia native in April of 1961, but soon grew disillusioned with the Soviet Union and in June, 1962, he and his new family returned to Dallas.

In January Oswald bought a hand gun, and then in March, a scoped rifle. People around him found him distant and increasing radical in his politics. He began to believe that he would have to kill someone important to show that he himself was important. On the night of April 10, 1963, Edwin Walker, a former Army general and fierce anti-Communist, was sitting at his desk in the family dining room when an explosion came from outside. “I heard a blast and crack right over my head” Walker said. “I thought possibly somebody had thrown a firecracker, that it exploded right over my head through window right behind me.” Oswald had stood just behind the fence a hundred feet away. Walker grabbed a gun and waited for more to happen. Several minutes later, he found that a bullet had gone into the wall an inch from where his head had been moments before. It had been deflected at the last second by some lattice work on the wall. Investigators later found that Oswald had cased the Walker house for a month.

Days after the shooting, Oswald took the family and moved to New Orleans, where he became involved in an organization critical of U.S. policy in Cuba and was arrested for fighting. His views made him somewhat of a local celebrityfor a short time and he gave a few interviews. In September, Oswald asked his wife to help him highjack a plane, an idea she quickly brushed off. On September 25, he drove to Mexico to talk to Cuban officials about moving there, but was turned down. In desperation, he went to the Soviet embassy and asked to return to Russia, but was again turned down.

In October, he returned to Dallas. By now, Oswald and his wife were living separate lives; after years of physical and mental abuse, she had finally moved in with friends. Oswald hated his new job at the Book Depository and found it demeaning. Then on November 19, a coworker shared a newspaper article reporting that Kennedy would be visiting Dallas and showed him on a map that the presidential motorcade would go right past their building.

As Kennedy read the newspaper on the morning of Nov. 22, he found several articles critical of his ongoing policies. One of them accused him of being soft on Communism. Another ran the headline, Wanted for Treason. Disgusted, Kennedy turned to his wife Jackie, who had accompanied him, and said, “We’re really in nut country now.” Dallas was seen as one of the most arch-conservative cities in the country. The month before, Adlai Stevenson had been hit and spit on after giving a speech, and Vice President Lyndon Johnson had once been chased into a hotel.

The Secret Service called to ask if the president wanted to put the bubble top on the roofless Lincoln Centennial limousine he would be riding in, as it was threatening to rain, but Kenneth O’ Donnell, a top aide, said no. Kennedy had mentioned several times that “the people came to see me not the Secret Service.”

Shortly after 8:00 a.m., Kennedy, accompanied by Vice President Johnson and Governor Connally, made his way through the Fort Worth hotel lobby and out onto a waiting platform truck to speak to amassed onlookers. He expressed his belief that America was stronger than at any time in history and focused on the role Fort Worth and Texas had played and would continue to play in the nation’s security and development. By 9:00 a.m., Kennedy and his entourage had moved into the main ballroom of the hotel to breakfast with the Chamber of Commerce. Again Kennedy spoke of the role Texas had played in national defense, but this time went even further, defending America’s role in South Vietnam, Asia and Europe. At 10:00 a.m., the Secret Service again called and said that it was a little rainy in Dallas and asked O'Donnell if he still wanted to leave Kennedy’s limousine open. O’Donnell said that unless it was raining when the president arrived at the Dallas airport, the top would stay off.

At 11:00 a.m., a motorcade left the hotel and Kennedy made his way to Carswell Air Force Base. Air Force One and Air Force Two took off for the half hour flight to Dallas. Landing at Love Field at 11:40 a.m., Kennedy left the plane and, noticing a large crowd lining the fence of the airport, began to shake hands. His trip had already gone better than planned, and this cemented it. Sun had broken through, and his roofless car was ready.

Kennedy’s vehicle would be the second in a seven car convoy. From Love Field, they would drive through downtown Dallas, through Dealey Plaza, past the Book Depository and finally to the Trade Mart building. Altogether, the trip would take about 45 minutes. At that same time that Kennedy was landing at the airport, Oswald was pacing back and forth on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Minutes later, the twelve other men on the floor broke for lunch. Oswald did not join them. He was now alone.

As Kennedy left airport, Jackie was at his side in the back seat. Connally and his wife Nellie sat in front with two Secret Service agents. Small groups of citizens greeted the president outside the airport. A group of small boys had sign that asked him to stop and shake their hands; Kennedy ordered the car to stop and did just that. Moments later, he stopped again to greet a nun, and then allowed the car to continue. As the parade of vehicles moved through the city, more and more people lined the street until they were packed from the edge of the sidewalk to the buildings. At Dealey Plaza, crowds had begun to gather. One of the curious onlookers, Abraham Zapruder, climbed to a vantage point atop a concrete wall with an 8 millimeter motion camera. As the motorcade neared, Secret Service agents and motorcycle patrolmen were told to drop back, as they were going to slow down.

By now, Oswald had pulled his rifle from its hiding place in the parcel he’d brought with him that morning, and had positioned himself in a sniper’s nest made of several boxes next to the window overlooking Dealey Plaza. Several bystanders noticed the man on the sixth floor, but none alerted authorities.

Now the lead car in the motorcade was moving through the plaza. Next, the car carrying Kennedy appeared, moving down Houston Street toward the Book Depository.Sixteen year old Amos Lee Euins, standing opposite the Depository, looked up and wondered why a pipe was sticking out of one of the windows. Then the car turned left onto Elm. “Mr. President, you can’t say that Dallas doesn’t love you.” said Nellie Connally. “No, you certainly can’t.” Kennedy said.

A sharp sound echoed across the plaza. Many thought it was board dropping, fireworks, or a vehicle backfiring. Oswald’s first shot had missed to the right, deflected off the concrete and sprayed onlooker James Tague in the face. At that instant, Hank Norman, on the fifth floor of the Book Depository, heard the sound and thought, “Someone is firing from upstairs right over my head.” Another worker heard the sound of a shell casing hitting the floor. A second shot rang out. The bullet tore into Kennedy’s back between his shoulders, cut through his neck, and hit Governor Connally in the back, exiting out his rib cage, deflecting off his raised right wrist, and burying itself in his left thigh. A second shell casing was heard dropping on the sixth floor. Oswald took extra second for the last shot, then fired. It shattered Kennedy’s skull. Abraham Zapruder had recorded the entire sequence of events on his movie camera. It had all taken just eight seconds.

Now the crowd stampeded in every direction; there was no mistaking what was happening. The president’s limousine sped up as Jackie screamed and a Secret Service agent leapt onto the trunk. Connally, bleeding profusely, shouted, “My God they’ll kill us all!” The driver gunned the engine toward the nearest hospital.

On the sixth floor, Oswald raced through a maze of boxes. Minutes later, he was spotted in the lunch room by a police officer who had run into the building. The policeman, followed by the manager, asked who he was, was told by the manager that Oswald was a worker, and continued upstairs. Oswald quickly walked out of the building and boarded a bus a short distance away. On the bus was his former landlady, who recognized him immediately.  The bus turned back into Dealey Plaza, caught in a snarl of traffic, and a bystander jumped onboard to shout that the president had been shot. Oswald stood up and asked to get off. He walked two more blocks, got a cab and told the driver to go to the neighborhood of Oak Cliff, where he lived.

The line of cars was now racing to Parkland Hospital, and in the press car, UPI reporter Merriman Smith picked up a specially installed phone and said, “Three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas.”  The cars slid to a stop at the hospital, and Johnson rushed inside. Kennedy was alive, but just barely. Calls began going out for all available personnel to report to the emergency room. Stretchers quickly moved Kennedy and Connally into two of the rooms.

Already word was starting to leak out as Smith’s cable flashed across the wires. In CBS’s New York headquarters, men were scrambling to get Walter Cronkite ready for a newsflash. In Washington, NBC’s David Brinkley was fuming as he could not go immediately on the air. Other reporters had now reached the Trade Mart and an announcement was made to the waiting crowd. At the hospital, doctors filled Kennedy’s room and worked furiously, but he was pronounced dead at 1:00 p.m.

Vice President Johnson was informed of Kennedy’s death; asked if he wanted to make the announcement, Johnson said no, he wanted to wait until he was out of the hospital. In New York, Cronkite was now on the air reporting that the president had been seriously wounded, but as he was making the announcement, word was already spreading that Kennedy had died. Finally, at 1:33 p.m., Kennedy’s press secretary announced that the president was dead. Cronkite, still on the air, paused, scanned the wires, and announced, “From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1:00 p.m. Central Standard Time, 2:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.” Biting down hard on his lip, Cronkite fought back tears.

Back at the Book Depository, sheriff’s deputies were on the sixth floor at 1:15 p.m., and in minutes had found the sniper’s nest hidden in the far corner and lifted a palm print that would be matched to Oswald. Minutes later, the rifle was found at the other end of the floor, a round still in the chamber and Oswald’s fingerprint on the trigger. At this point, however, police still did not know who they were searching for.

Oswald, dropped off a few steps from his room, rushed in, startling his current landlady, and was out the door again five minutes later. As he trudged down the road, apparently trying to get to a bus stop that would take him out of town, Dallas Police Officer J.D Tippit spotted him. A description had emerged of the man in the sixth floor window which matched this man walking down the road. Tippit stopped and called for Oswald to halt; Oswald walked to the hood of the police car and Tippit stepped out and circled the car to talk to him. Then Oswald pulled out a pistol and shot Tibbit three times in the chest, paused, stepped closer and stood over the officer, and put a final round in his head. He then ran into a nearby shoe store as police cars screamed down on the murder scene. Sneaking from the shoe store, he ducked into the Texas Theater, but was spotted by the ticket and concession stand clerks. The manager called the police, who announced that a man matching the description of the one at Dealey Plaza was at the theater. Officers converged on the theater building and Oswald fought and tried to pull his gun, but was quickly wrestled to the ground and arrested. By 2:00 p.m., he was charged with the murder of Tippit.

As Oswald was being arrested, Johnson was leaving Dallas. The Secret Service had taken Kennedy’s body from the hospital and placed it on Air Force One. On the plane, Johnson stood with Jackie, still wearing her blood stained suit, while he was administered the oath of office. They landed at Andrews Air Force Base that evening.

Oswald was questioned intensely by the Dallas police, FBI, and Secret Service for two days. He denied any role in either murder, but the eye witnesses, ballistics evidence and fingerprints were overwhelming and the district attorney was sure he could bring a conviction. Oswald’s older brother Robert visited him at this time. “There was no emotion that you could see,” he remembered.

On November 24, Oswald was to be transferred to the Dallas County Jail. He was being escorted through the basement, and large group of reporters was waiting. Among them was Jack Ruby, a local night club owner with some connections to the police and underworld.

Ruby, a fierce Kennedy supporter, had experienced an emotional breakdown upon hearing of Kennedy’s death, and closed his club. On November 24, he had been in his apartment when one of the girls who worked for him called to ask him to transfer money for her. Ruby had gone into the bank, leaving his pet dog in the car, and transferred the money. He then walked one block to the jail, arriving in the basement at 11:20 a.m. Oswald and his escort reached the basement a minute later. As Oswald walked toward the police wagon in front of national news cameras, Ruby suddenly stepped out of the crowd and shot him in the side. Oswald was immediately taken to Parkland Hospital, where he died two hours later.

In 1964, a Dallas jury found Jack Ruby guilty of murder and sentenced him to death.

Over the years, many people have claimed Ruby was part of larger plot. However, those who knew him doubt it. Hugh Aynesworth, an entertainment reporter, said, “Jack Ruby was a wannabe never was, but it’s really a joke if you think Jack Ruby could be involved in a conspiracy. This is a man who if he knew anything he would tell someone within one block. He wanted to be important.” This view was supported by Tony Zoppi, another reporter who knew Ruby, who said, “It is so ludicrous to believe Ruby was part of the mob.” He continued, “The conspiracy theorists want to believe all but those who really knew him.” He added, “People in Dallas, in those circles, knew Ruby was a snitch. The word on the street was you couldn’t trust him because he was telling the police everything.” Even the assistant district attorney who convicted him, said, “We knew who the criminals were in Dallas back then, to say Ruby was part of organized crime is just [hogwash].”

Initially, Ruby claimed that he had attacked alone. Later he claimed to be part of vast conspiracy that went all the way to the top. While many people use this to point to a plot, the truth is Ruby had always had a volatile temper and was known to be a little crazy. His brother and sister were shocked at his mental decline by the mid 1960s. He often thought he heard screaming when there was only silence, and even claimed he had killed Kennedy. Ruby died of cancer in 1967. He claimed to have been injected with it. 

Both Kennedy and Oswald were buried on the same day. In the months that followed, thousands insisted there had been a plot. Johnson wanted to put an end to the rumors and tapped Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Earl Warren to lead a commission on the assassination, but asked it to be done before he faced the presidential election. After ten months, the Warren Commission found that Oswald had acted alone. Still, many doubted the findings and a second commission, the House on Assassinations, was created in 1976 to reexamine the entire case. For three years, they interviewed witnesses and reviewed evidence. Finally, they were ready to release their report that would state that the original findings had been correct. Then audio experts came forward and claimed they had evidence of four shots on a forgotten recording from a police motorcycle present at the scene. The committee concluded there was the possibility of a conspiracy. However, this evidence, their cornerstone, was later proven to be inaccurate as the policeman who had the radio proved he had been too far away to hear the shots.

In the end, despite all the rumors, stories, witnesses, books, and movies, there has never been any concrete evidence of a conspiracy. Robert Oswald may have put it best: “After all these years, I think more than anything else, if I had the opportunity, had the facts that said Lee was innocent, I would be out there shouting it loud and clear.” He concluded, “It is my belief, my conviction that no one but Lee was involved. Period.”